At eighteen, she met the book that planted the seed. Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows wrapped itself around her imagination with its gentle animals, its riverbanks, and its unhurried wisdom. But she was soon on her way to UC Berkeley, stepping into a world of academics, administration, responsibility, and adulthood. The enchantment stayed with her but made no demands.

Her early career unfolded in the structured hum of university life. Nancy served in Academic Personnel at the Chancellor’s Office and later at the Lawrence Hall of Science. When she eventually moved to Seattle, she transitioned into personnel and office management for a major law firm, becoming the quiet axis around which entire departments ran smoothly.

For decades, she lived in the world of people: hiring, mentoring, organizing, guiding. A life of impact, far from the whimsy of talking animals and rhyming lines. Yet nothing about that detour diminished the stories waiting inside her. It simply ripened them.

When she retired in 2002, she stepped immediately into service work, joining the Board of Directors for the Pacific Northwest USO. For eight years, she contributed to the well-being of military families, even serving on the Executive Committee. It was meaningful work. It was patriotic work. It was work that mattered.

Then life, as it sometimes does, delivered a difficult chapter. Health issues required her to step away from the board in 2014. The shift left her with both space and silence, the kind of quiet that invites old memories to surface. And from that quiet came the voices of those long-loved fictional animals she had met half a century earlier.

It wasn’t nostalgia that drew her back. It was recognition. After years of serving institutions, communities, and families, it was finally time to create something of her own.

She decided to write a children’s book. Not just any book, but one built on the values, emotions, and warmth that had shaped her own reading life. She created a cast of lovable animals. She let them speak in rhyme. She sketched a small adventure full of curiosity and gentle humor. And she poured into it the kind of sincerity that only comes from someone who knows what childhood magic feels like and understands how precious it is.

When the first draft was complete, she faced a second mountain: publishing. This was where many new authors would give up. Nancy did the opposite. She immersed herself in research, joined the Alliance of Independent Authors, and studied every part of the independent publishing ecosystem. Through that journey she found Ocean Reeve Publishing, a team that helped her refine her manuscript, collaborate with an illustrator, format her pages, and shape her narrative into a professional, polished picture book.

She even mastered marketing well enough to presell 125 copies before the physical book existed.

The result was Scooter and Friends Take a Vacation , a warm and melodic story that feels as if it belongs on the shelf beside the classics that shaped her. The illustrations radiate kindness. The rhyme moves like a soft rhythm that children can follow even before they learn to read. And the world she created is colorful without being chaotic, adventurous without being frightening, and imaginative without losing clarity.

But the real story here is Nancy.

She is a reminder that creative life can begin at any age. That inspiration does not expire. That the ideas tucked away in young adulthood can resurface when the heart is finally ready. She represents a quieter kind of artistic resilience, one built not on struggle but on patience. Children’s literature is richer because she said yes to the call that returned to her after fifty years.

Nancy is currently working on the sequel to Scooter and Friends Take a Vacation , expanding the world of her irresistible animal travelers. She continues to speak at schools, organizations, and community events, not just about her book but about the entire independent publishing journey. She tells children and adults alike that stories are living things and that the chance to write them is never lost.

Her life, as much as her book, is a gentle invitation: it is never too late to bring something joyful into the world.

AUTHOR LINKS

Official Website

Amazon

CITATION TABLE

PR & Media Contact

Kyle Thompson
pr@evrimachicago.com